Author, Screenwriter, Halloween Expert…what's next?

After 28 years in a second-story apartment, I moved into a house again in January of 2015. Does it sound crazy to say that we immediately began to imagine our first yard haunt? If you know my love of yard haunts, then it probably doesn’t sound totally whack.

Unfortunately, it didn’t happen in October 2015 (when my father was dying), but we started planning and gathering materials early in 2016. We grew two varieties of pumpkins (regular jack-o’-lantern and Big Max, which yielded a couple of fifty-pounders). After attending the Midsummer Scream Halloween show in July, we knew we wanted to project a loop of a haunted graveyard on our garage door, so we ordered the projector and the digital file of the loop. When the Spirit Halloween store opened in September, we started buying tombstones and cobwebs and lights.

We had to keep in mind one odd situation with our house: it was built in 1965, still has the original wiring, and fries circuits if we overload them. It also has no outlets on the front or sides of the house, so we’d have to choose electrically-powered devices carefully, since we’d only be able to run extensions from the garage and one bathroom. We relied as much as possible on solar- and battery-powered devices.

We were very happy with how it turned out, although we’re already planning bigger and better for 2017! We also had disappointingly few kids come by (we’re in a cul-de-sac) – maybe 20 or so. The trick or treaters who did make it loved it. It was so fun seeing their parents pose them for photos in our graveyard. The kids had big eyes and bigger smiles by the time they reached the front door. Next year we’ll try to promote our efforts a little more.

Enjoy the gallery of photos and the video walk-through from our inaugural haunt. Happy Halloween!